Deadly Web (11 page)

No, Rene repeated. Dona had no one. She stayed in her home for weeks at a time. The only people she saw regularly were her parents. They were everything to her. She was everything to them.

Rene realized she wasn’t talking anymore. She was sobbing. There were no more words. She waved the detectives away, would not even open her eyes until they were out of the house. Then she went and retrieved all the photo albums.

She started flipping the pages in the album labeled
Dona, 0 - 6 months
.

Chapter Eight

Hannah opened her eyes and groaned. Her neck felt incredibly sore. She had a terrible taste in her mouth - the unmistakable product of drinking a lot of coffee followed by sleeping without brushing her teeth. There was a drool stain on her shirt collar. In retrospect, shutting her eyes for a minute before driving home had probably not been the best of ideas. She glanced at the time. Five hours. She’d slept in her car for five hours. This was as pathetic as it could get.

Well, on the bright side, she was already at the station. No need to fight traffic. This was wonderful! She sighed. Her self-deception wasn’t working at all. And she needed to pee. Once again, the result of too much coffee.

She got out of the car and stretched, rolling her head slowly in one direction then the other. She entered the station, hoping to avoid anyone who might notice she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, or perceive the crumpled state of her shirt. She reached her locker without incident, because sometimes the gods smiled upon the unworthy. There was a pair of jeans and a faded shirt in the locker, as well as a toothbrush and a towel. She went to the bathroom and had her second pathetic moment that day as she did a quick makeshift shower in the bathroom’s sink, and (third pathetic moment) changed her clothes in the bathroom stall, banging her elbow painfully on the stall’s door.

Well, to paraphrase Lewis Carroll, sometimes you had to have as many as six pathetic moments before breakfast.

The squad room was empty when she entered it. She took out her phone to call Jacob and find out how the case was progressing, and saw she had a missed call from Bernard. She called him back.

“Hey,” he said. “Hang on for a sec.”

Hannah poured herself a cup of coffee, listening. Bernard was talking to someone, asking someone to call him if he heard anything. A door closed.

“Yeah,” he said to Hannah. “You awake?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Where are you?”

“I’m doing a door-to-door in Frank Gulliepe’s building.”

“Found anything?”

“There’s an old woman here who said that she might have heard something, but then she said it might be the rats, so I don’t think she’s very credible. Another woman tried to enlist me in her war against the next-door neighbors whose trash bags are always dripping in the hallway, making a mess.”

“Sounds important. What about Jacob and Mitchell? Where are they?”

“Investigating another murder,” he replied. “I just talked to Jacob on the phone. They talked to Lyla Harper—that’s Frank’s girlfriend. She says two days ago Frank ran into someone who started yelling at him to leave his wife alone.”

“One of the harassed women’s husbands?” Hannah asked, turning on her computer.

“That would be my guess,” Bernard said. “We have a good description. Tall, bald, with a big nose and hairy eyebrows.”

“Hairy eyebrows, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Okay,” Hannah moved her head to the side. Her neck still hurt. “Anything else?”

“Frank’s sister reported seeing a blue Ford Fiesta whenever Frank came to visit her. But she says it wasn’t Frank’s.”

“So now we have a red Toyota Corolla and a Blue Ford Fiesta,” Hannah scratched her forehead. “We’ll be able to open a car dealership soon. Do you want me to join you over there?”

“Well, I only have four apartments left,” Bernard said. “Sounds like a waste of time. Why don’t you go over our harassed women? Check out their social network profiles, try to establish if any of them has a tall, big-nosed, bald husband with bushy eyebrows.”

“Okay,” Hannah said. “Good luck.”

She sat down and found the page on which she’d scrawled the list of the women Frank had targeted. She opened their Twitter accounts, and any matching Facebook and Instagram accounts she could find, and browsed through them. She paused on one of the Instagram photos, a woman leaning on a brown Toyota Corolla. It wasn’t red, but still… She called the DMV, while glancing at the Instagram profile name. Jenny Tarp.

A man answered, sounding as if all he’d done for the past fifty years was smoke one cigarette after the other. Hannah asked him if they had a brown Toyota Corolla registered to Jenny Tarp in Glenmore Park. The man put her on hold for a few minutes, then came back and said they did, giving her the details.

She thanked him and nearly hung up, then changed her mind. She explained that they had a murder, and a suspect was seen fleeing in a red Toyota Corolla. Could the DMV send the Glenmore Park police department a list of all red Toyota Corollas registered in Glenmore Park? Oh, and all the blue Ford Fiestas as well. Sure, the man said; he’d get right on it.

Hannah thanked him again and hung up. She knew from experience that “getting right on it” meant they’d get the list in a few days. The DMV had a different interpretation for “Getting right on it” than she did.

She printed Jenny Tarp’s image. A few more minutes of going through the different social network profiles produced another printed image. She saw that Violet had sent the diagram of the crime scene, so she printed it as well. Then she retrieved an image of Chad Grimes from his record and printed that, too, for good measure.

As Bernard walked into the squad room, Hannah was taping the images to one of the squad’s whiteboards. “Anything?” she asked, without turning her head.

“Nope. You?”

“Yeah, some.” She pointed at a picture of a bald, middle-aged man staring sleepily out a window. “This is Derrek Foster, Melanie Foster’s husband.”

“Okay,” Bernard said.

“He matches the description of the man who accosted Frank in the restaurant.”

“His eyebrows are not bushy,” Bernard pointed out. “And his nose is not that big. I think.”

“Whatever,” Hannah said testily. “It’s not a bad match.”

“Okay, who’s that?” He pointed at a selfie of a woman, taking a picture in a parking lot.

“That’s Jenny Tarp.”

“She’s not really bald. Nice eyebrows.”

“Yeah, but the car she’s leaning on is a Toyota Corolla.”

“A brown Toyota Corolla,” Bernard said. “Brown is not red.”

“Thank you, Big Bird. I can distinguish between colors. Brown might seem like red in the dark,” Hannah said. “Maybe the taxi driver got it wrong.”

“It might not be her car.”

“It’s her car. I checked.”

“Is her husband—”

“I couldn’t find a picture of her husband in her Instagram account,” Hannah said.

“Okay,” Bernard said. “Any luck finding that blue Ford?”

“No, but I asked the DMV for a list of all the blue Ford Fiesta cars in Glenmore Park.”

“Okay, good,” Bernard said. He sounded distracted.

“What is it?” Hannah asked.

“The blue Ford. Does it ring a bell? I feel like I’ve run into a car like that somewhere before.”

“It’s a pretty common car, Bernard.”

“Yeah…” He was silent for a second. “What about the rest?” he finally asked.

“I ruled out two women who were clearly single according to their profiles, and one who’s married to a woman. One woman is married to a man with a ridiculous-looking haircut and a beard, so he’s out.”

“So we have two potential husbands so far.”

“Yup.”

“That’s a good start.” Bernard said.

Hannah and Bernard decided to talk to Melanie Foster first, since she was currently at work at Yorrick & Rodrick Co., which was also where Frank Gulliepe had been employed. Yorrick & Rodrick was on the seventh floor of a tall office building in the city’s center. It was a vast office, split into dozens of cubicles. The entire place was alight with white, aggressive fluorescent lamps. Considering the number of people sitting in this huge space, the atmosphere was quiet and somber. Most of the noise came from vigorous typing of the employees in the room. Hannah glanced at a couple of the monitors. They all seemed to display Excel spreadsheets. Bernard asked one of the employees if Melanie was at work today, and the man pointed in a vague direction. He tried to ask two additional employees until a wide, curly-haired woman said, “I’m Melanie.”

She was about thirty-five, with a plump, pinkish face and a kind smile. Her hair, though blonde, had long, dark roots. She wore a large, unflattering pink shirt and tailored black pants. Hannah thought she seemed like the kind of woman who would fit in better at a bakery making cinnamon rolls than in a cubicle typing into a spreadsheet.

“How do you do, Mrs. Foster?” Hannah said. “I’m Detective Shor, and this is my partner, Detective Gladwin. Can we take a minute or two of your time?”

“Sure,” Melanie said. “I’m glad you’re finally taking this seriously.”

“I’m sorry?” Hannah said.

“My stalker. The guy who is harassing me. I’ve been waiting for more than two weeks for some indication of progress.”

The detectives exchanged looks. “Did you complain to the police that someone was harassing you?” Hannah said.

“Yeah. More than two weeks ago. I thought that was what this was about.” Melanie seemed deflated. “You aren’t here because of the complaint?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Hannah said. “We’re here on a different matter, though it might be related.”

“Oh. What is it then?”

“Do you know Frank Gulliepe?”

“Sure!” Melanie motioned to the empty, adjacent cubicle. “He works next to me. A really sweet guy.”

“When did you last see Frank?”

“Yesterday. He was at work.”

“When did he leave work?”

“Around four, I think. What is this about?”

“Mrs. Foster, Frank was found dead in his apartment last night,” Hannah said, and looked into the woman’s eyes.

Melanie shrieked.

It was an ear-piercing sound, full of horror and sorrow, worthy of a theater show. She followed up the spectacle by bursting into tears.

The detectives waited for the sobbing to subside. Hannah was very much aware that every eye in the room was trained on them.

“Excuse me.” A black woman with an expensive-looking gray pantsuit and unpleasant makeup approached them. Her tone of voice was hard and sharp enough to cut through diamonds. “Is there a problem here?”

Bernard flipped his shield. “Police, ma’am. We’re on official business.”

“They say that Frank is dead,” Melanie said, blubbering.

“Is this true?” the woman asked.

“Is there a place where we can talk more privately?” Hannah asked.

The woman nodded briskly. “My office.”

Hannah, Bernard, and Melanie Foster followed the woman, clearly one of the managers, to her office. It stood on the edge of the open space, separated from the rest of the cubicles by a thin wooden door. There were only three chairs, and Bernard walked out to find a fourth, returning a moment later with one in his hands. The manager looked at him and narrowed her eyes as he sat down, and Hannah imagined a
chair reallocation
e-mail would be sent later to all the employees.

“What’s this about?” the manager asked.

“I’m sorry, we weren’t properly introduced,” Hannah said. “I’m Detective Shor. And you are…?”

“Abbey Yorrick,” the manager said.

“You’re one of the owners, then?”

“That’s right.”

“Mrs. Yorrick, Frank Gulliepe was found dead last night in his apartment.”

“I see,” Abbey Yorrick said dryly. “That’s terrible.”

“It is,” Hannah agreed, quirking an eyebrow. “Now, if you don’t mind, we need to question Melanie for a few minutes.”

“Very well.”

“Alone.”

Abbey Yorrick looked at Hannah in shock. “This is my office—”

“Yes,” Hannah interrupted her. “And your employee was found dead. This is a murder investigation, Mrs. Yorrick.”

Abbey Yorrick opened and closed her mouth a few times, and then stood up and left her office in a huff, slamming the door behind her.

“Okay,” Bernard said. “Now. Mrs. Foster, I understand that you’re married.”

“Yes, I am,” she said in surprise.

“Do you know where your husband was last night?”

“Absolutely. He was with me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! What’s my husband got to do with this?” Hysteria was quickly being replaced by indignation.

“May I ask what you were doing?”

“It’s none of your business, but I don’t mind telling you. We watched some TV and went to bed.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“Around half past ten.”

“So as far as you know, your husband could have sneaked out once you were asleep.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she stared at them both, her face red, her lips clenched tight.

“Mrs. Foster do you recognize the Twitter profiles
youslut134
,
youslut444
and
melaniefatslut
?” Hannah asked.

“Those are all Twitter profiles of my stalker.”

“Why do you think he was stalking you?”

“Because he knows private stuff about me. The names of my husband and children, where I work, where I live. I told all that to the cop who interviewed me when I reported this.”

“Mrs. Foster, were you aware that Frank Gulliepe was the man behind those Twitter profiles?”

“Don’t be dumb,” Melanie said, her voice rising. “Frank was a good man. Everyone who knew him thought so. He was caring and considerate. He was always there for me. When my son was sick, when I had troubles at home, when I was nearly fired… Frank helped me get through it all. I knew him well. You have the wrong guy.”